The vertiginous ascent of Brazilian trap music

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Originally from the streets of Atlanta in the 2000s, trap music, is a hip-hop sub-genre that combines deep bass grooves, the accent of drum plates, auto-tuning, ad-libbing, and a higher music tempo (90 to 140 bpm). While trap music has been produced in Brazil since the early 2010s, the Brazilian trap has gained huge projection only in the last few years.

According to Spotify Brazil, Brazilian trap’s audience rose, from 2016 to 2019, 61% every year. What’s more, Recayd Mob, one of the most prominent groups from São Paulo’s trap, saw their plays on this streaming platform increase by 1,000% in 2019. The YouTube music videos of Matuê, a trap giant from Ceará, surpassed, altogether, 1 billion views in 2020.

Much of Brazilian trap’s growing popularity has to do with a myriad of new artists that have appeared in recent times. As of 2017 and 2018, youngsters connected to the hip-hop world released their first trap productions on YouTube, TikTok, and other streaming and social media platforms. In a three-year time, they have helped place Brazilian trap music under the spotlights.

One of these artists is Raffa Moreira. Like most trappers booming in Brazil, he comes from the outskirts of a big urban center and, before making trap, he was involved with rap music in the São Paulo City of Guarulhos (where he comes from).

But, unlike most Brazilian trappers (who are usually in their early 20s), Moreira is 33. The oldest representative of Brazil’s trap is a pioneer: his first trap productions were released in 2014 – when the genre was still relatively unknown in Brazil.

Today, Brazilian trap is featured in documentary series, reality shows (Real Trap BR, the first for trappers only, was released in November last year), and even eSports events (tournaments of electronic sports modalities such as League of Legends and Free Fire).

Managing an increasing number of careers in trap music, the biggest hip-hop record labels in Brazil, such as Mainstreet Records, Pineapple Storm, and Malibu Studios, add up to 10 million listeners a month on Spotify.

But Brazil’s trap is far from being a monolith. One of the biggest in the scene right now, MC Poze do Rodo, brings the reality of his favela community in Rio de Janeiro to music videos marked by material ostentation.

While trappers like FBC (from Minas Gerais) sing about living in Belo Horizonte’s outskirts, the female duo Hyperanhas, from São Paulo’s countryside, talk about female empowerment, also from an outskirts perspective. The Rio trapper Ebony, on her hand, is famous for lyrics where, as a Black woman, she discusses sexism in society.

But, unlike national rap, where songs are usually a more direct expression of social criticism, Brazilian trap also encompasses lyrics that portray love stories, sex, and the daily life of these artists. What’s more, rare are the trappers who don’t experiment with other music genres in their productions.

Like MC Poze do Rodo‘s, the work of Recayd Mob moves around trap, rap, and Brazilian funk. Matuê, from Ceará, blends pop and trap. Coming from Bahia, Duquesa merges trap with the sonorities of R&B.

The visuals of Brazilian trap shouldn’t be taken for granted either. In this music scene, there’s room for both the mainstream and the experimental. One can easily bump into music videos with people wearing fancy clothing and a homemade video clip with a more conceptual proposal lying underneath.

Even though trap music is predominantly male, more female voices conquer space in the scene – most notably in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasília. MC Taya, Vix Russell, Ebony, Anaju, Onnika, and the duo Hyperanhas are only some of the women representing the Brazilian trap, whose history has only begun.

Find more artists booming in the Brazilian trap scene here.